Becoming ‘Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts:' A Conversation With PRINTING United Alliance CEO Ford Bowers
Earlier this year, Brand Chain announced the exciting news that the association will merge with PRINTING United Alliance April 1.
As we approach this milestone, the Brand Chain editorial team sat down with Ford Bowers, CEO of PRINTING United Alliance (left). We discussed the trends he’s keeping a pulse on and what people can look forward to as our organizations join forces. What follows is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
What are some key trends and innovations you're seeing in this industry? What makes you excited about the future of print and branding?
The history of printing has seen so many different niches. Everything was so fragmented that we didn’t function as a cohesive whole. The fact that people now recognize we're part of a very large, integrated community of professionals is exciting.
As a result of what's happened with technological shifts, people don't have to stay in their lanes. Commercial printers can get into labels, label printers can get into commercial, apparel printers are getting into industrial or functional printing, and so on.
If you go to the PRINTING United Expo, for example, the solutions that are offered showcase integrations of many different types of applications and end products, producing work in new and relevant ways. This gathering of an industry is not just cathartic — it spurs innovation. It's a marketplace that launches business ideas.
I like what you said about realizing collective strength. In Brand Chain’s 75-plus year history we’ve learned there’s more to our industry than print. It's print and brand solutions. It's print and having a seat at the table in regard to strategy.
Yes, as an industry, the more collective our efforts, the more we can solve bigger issues. One thing we set out to do is work in advocacy and lobbying. Our presence on the Hill is amplified tremendously when everybody works together. The Alliance can claim to speak — and does speak — for the entirety of the industry and our thousands of members.
Another example is the work we’ve started around workforce development. Everybody has a hard time attracting, retaining and developing talent. To do it right, it has to be done at the systemic level.
Let’s talk about hot topics rising up, one being sustainability, which will be a focus of our Leadership Summit in May. How can print and brand solutions providers lead in this space?
In terms of getting started, you have to know your sources. Where does your product come from? What does its end of life look like? Then you can make decisions and influence people who buy from you.
I think we can learn from Europe and be more proactive on many fronts. Here, it's going to boil down to price rather than to social stewardship. On the European scale, they're going to put their finger on social stewardship. So it remains a challenge, but knowing your sources and end of life is a good starting point.
Right, and at the end of the day it can be a business advantage. That's what we've heard, there are more requests for sourcing sustainably. It’s becoming an imperative.
Yes, the brand will determine how important it is before you even get a chance to interact. If they're sending out an RFP, they might say, “What do you do relative to sustainability? Do you have any certifications?"
When they ask those questions, if you know your products’ sourcing and end of life, then you're going to have a conversation. If you haven't done that much of your homework, it's a short conversation.
Education and awareness are a big component for companies that don't know where to start. PRINTING United Alliance has subject matter experts on staff that follow trends like this closely and set out to help organizations, regardless of size.
Ultimately, I think legislation will tip the scales. And almost all of this legislation starts at the state level, meaning things are done differently across the country.
For example, in New York there’s a bill to ban carbon black, because it’s toxic. That means no black ink. And not only can you not use it there, you also can't sell anything that has it into the state — and that’s a problem.
Legislators aren’t doing their homework as precisely as they should, which is where education comes in. Gary Jones, our vice president of environmental health and safety affairs, watches these things. He and his team are dissecting and getting ahead of these issues. They’re getting involved in the right conversations, sending letters and making phone calls.
Again, when you have more people under your belt, you're punching at that weight. We're able to get in contact with our members by zip code. We alert them that these things are coming down the pipeline. This is the benefit of our organization because they're doing that homework for you.
We’re also going to focus on artificial intelligence (AI) at our Leadership Summit. Where are you seeing AI being harnessed productively? What role does it have for our industry?
It's early to see what all the contours are going to be. But if the pundits are correct, that this is as big as the internet itself — and I’m of that mind — this will be a tremendous turning point.
It's going to take some years for it to change the way we deal with print, but it will touch nearly everything. How we source products and manage customer service are two examples. AI is going to look at big data and learn iteratively without being programmed.
If you're a distributor, your online chats will be driven by AI. Product life cycles, maintenance of equipment, scheduling, estimating — all of that is going to be done with the assistance of AI.
It's going to become part of every tool set we use in printing. It will be a long time before individual companies start to implement it themselves. It will come embedded in the tools we already use.
As we get closer to the Brand Chain and PRINTING United Alliance merger, what do you want this community to know? What can they look forward to?
We have a lot to learn from each other. The interesting thing will be joining forces — what opportunities come from that, how we take advantage of that. Our community includes printers, suppliers, consultants, educators — and now we’re joined by a group intimately involved in the process of delivering print to end users and purchasing billions of dollars of these products every year.
On the PRINTING United side, we have a whole host of resources on our website — certifications, online learning, material on sustainability, regulatory oversight, HR best practices and more. I look forward to seeing how we can become greater than the sum of our parts.
Beyond this merger, PRINTING United Alliance has garnered a lot of attention. We're doing this because the market is asking for it. Not because we're brilliant, but the market has wanted this to happen for a long time. We've been fortunate to bring together the right people in the right organizations in a very short period of time.
Learn more about the merger between Brand Chain and PRINTING United Alliance in this letter from Brand Chain President Brett Jackson and PERF Chairman Nathan Goldberg.
By Kristin Frankiewicz, Brand Chain Editor-in-Chief